Road design in permafrost areas requires a special approach based on the thermal analyses of soil foundations and roadbeds to determine the necessary design parameters of the road, such as the height of embankment, the thickness of the thermal insulation layer, etc.
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Simmakers specialists have analyzed the efficiency of applying CUDA technology to the implementation of the Douglas-Rachford scheme (alternating direction implicit method, ADI method). The ADI method is used to solve partial differential equations of the parabolic type, such as heat equations in three dimensions. It was found that the Douglas-Rachford scheme presented natural parallelism allowing for effective ADI mathematical solver parallelization with CUDA (Nvidia).
In the article, we provide calculation results demonstrating the performance acceleration for software-implemented Douglas-Rachford scheme using CUDA technology when compared with the implementation of the same scheme on a CPU. |
Experts from Simmakers conducted a comparative performance analysis of hardware computational modules – Intel Core i7 CPU and GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, using the thaw bulb simulation model around a well cluster.
To evaluate the efficiency of parallel architecture in thermal analyses (characteristics of the computational processors aside), the degree of the computational mesh detail is dramatically important. Therefore, the three-dimensional model was discretized with different spatial steps in the tests. As a result, meshes with the next number of nodes were obtained: ~2 million, 4 million, 8 million and 16 million. Each computational mesh was computed on 1 core of Intel Core i7, 4 cores of Intel Core and a GeForce GTX Titan video card.
On October 16, 2014 experts from Simmakers Ltd. gave presentations at the “Technologies for design and construction of foundations on permafrost” conference, as part of the CityExpo exhibition.
The conference was organized by the International Association of Foundation Contractors (IAFC), one of the leading promoters of professional and technical development in foundations engineering for construction companies and specialists in Russia and abroad.
The conference focused on topics such as design and construction of bases and foundations on permafrost, the installation of foundations in permafrost areas, oil and gas pipelines on permafrost, thermal stabilization of soil bases of buildings and structures, temperature monitoring systems in permafrost, etc.
Simmakers provides ‘Computation of the thermal impact of constructions on permafrost in Frost 3D Universal’ training courses and guidance. Training solutions are designed to provide course participants with both the overall and subject-specific knowledge to effectively apply «Frost 3D Universal» for simulation of heat transfer in ground.
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Calculation of soil settlement is one of the main tasks of applied computer simulation in construction. This allows the simulation of the settlement of bases and foundations under different maintenance conditions over time, evaluation of the complexity and construction costs, reliability and durability. In permafrost regions settlement, can be caused not only by structural loads, but also by ground thawing, resulting from the additional pressure of ground transition from frozen to thawed states. This article describes the method of settlement calculation according to SNIP 2.02.04-88. |
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There are 4 versions of Frost 3D Universal:
The main differences between versions are the speed of the mathematical solver and the number of cells for model discretization. |
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The speed of numerical computation depends on the computer configuration (number of CPU cores), and video card performance (GPU versions of software).
As a result, the question “Which version of Frost 3D Universal could fulfil users requirements?” often arises.
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A critical issue in computer simulation is quality of mesh refinement in object discretization. In an already published article “FAQ for the updated version of Frost 3D Universal software”, we discussed why such large computational meshes are important.
In this article we analyze the quality of model discretization. For our example, we used ice layers beneath a 1-km model of an oil pipeline on permafrost. The 3-D model was discretized into various cell quantities using different versions of Frost 3D Universal. |
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